IBM and Novell Inc. last week introduced new hardware and software, respectively, tailored for service providers.

IBM unveiled new thin servers in both its Netfinity line of Windows and Linux servers and its RS/6000 line of Unix servers. For its part, Novell formally rolled out at the NetWorld+Interop show here its NetWare Clustering Services for NetWare 5.0 software, which can handle the large workloads that Web traffic can produce.

Headlining the Netfinity servers is the 4000R model, a four-processor system targeted at Web hosting. The thin server, which includes technology licensed from Network Engines Inc., measures only 1.5 inches high, so it can be easily stacked in a rack configuration.

Also in IBM's service provider arsenal are the previously announced Netfinity 8500R and two unannounced servers, code-named Sparrow and Silkworm. Sparrow is a two-processor server that will be marketed as a high-availabil ity system. The four-processor Silkworm server will support the rest of the infrastructure, IBM officials said.

IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., also introduced the RS/6000 B50, which measures 3.5 inches high and can be stacked 20 in a rack. The server, which supports both AIX and Linux, can support up to 60 network connections and 720GB of internal storage. Pricing for the B50 starts at $3,995.

A companion to the B50 is the new 2104 Expandable Storage Plus storage subsystem. The rack-mountable disk array can accommodate 364GB in a single drawer, officials said.

Meanwhile, Novell's new clustering software provides failover of file and print services, e-mail, collaboration software, and Web applications between multiple servers running NetWare 5.0. The software is certified to cluster as many as eight servers, but officials said it is designed to support 32 nodes in a cluster.

In the event one node fails, another picks up the processes from that server in a matter of seconds. This small window of downtime is required with any application on the Web, said Patty Dock, vice president of product marketing at Novell, in Provo, Utah.

"The reality is [that without clustering], it takes tens of minutes to restart a server that goes down," Dock said. "On the Internet, people will just go elsewhere."

Through integration with the company's NDS and ConsoleOne management software, NetWare Cluster Services provides a single point of administration for shared storage.

NetWare Cluster Services will be available Oct. 11 priced at $4,999 per node.

IBM can be reached at (800) 426-3333 or www.ibm.com. Novell is at (888) 321-4272 or www.novell.com.

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